


Stork Stories

by holyfant



Category: Glee
Genre: Childbirth, F/F, set after 1x22
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-30
Updated: 2012-11-30
Packaged: 2017-11-19 21:50:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/578021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holyfant/pseuds/holyfant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's disgusting. After Regionals, Quinn disappears through the doors of the maternity ward, taking all of the drama with her, and everyone – even Rachel – goes quiet. It's unbearable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stork Stories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bewarethesmirk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bewarethesmirk/gifts).



> Written for bewarethesmirk for the [Femslash Multifandom Ficathon 2012](http://femslash12.livejournal.com/).
> 
> Thanks and love to drinkingcocoa for her help. <3

**Stork Stories**

 

It's disgusting. After Regionals, Quinn disappears through the doors of the maternity ward, taking all of the drama with her, and everyone – even Rachel – goes quiet. It's unbearable. Santana flips through all of the available gossip mags in the waiting room and draws handlebar moustaches on all of the smarmy pictures of the judges of _So You Think You Can Dance_ that accompanies an article raving about the new batch of contestants, even though even an unborn blind baby could see they suck. Kurt, glancing down at the mag, gives her his lop-sided grin; it's annoying that she isn't really annoyed by it. She drops the pen onto the glossy page and then, full of a hot unease, she sits with her head leaned against the wall, listening to the sounds of new parents and new babies rooms away. Finn paces around in his infuriating gait – tonight she says nothing, and grits her teeth instead of quipping about beached whales flopping around in their death throes. It sounds unsatisfying even in her head.

 

“I had fun tonight,” Brittany, who is sensitive to some tensions and oblivious to others, says from where she's sitting on the floor, her gold headband now drawn over her eyes like a demented blindfold.

 

“Glee club is going to be _cancelled_ ,” Santana snaps at her.

 

Brittany goes still; her fingers let go of the headband's ends in her hair, and it falls off her face. Her eyes are already trained on Santana, and her mouth is small and sad, and it makes Santana want to stand up and bitch-smack someone, anyone, anyone who isn't Brittany, maybe Finn who can't just sit down and stop making them all nauseous or Rachel who keeps pawing at him like a blood-eager tick wanting to latch on, or maybe the nurses who make annoyed noises when they pass, or maybe Santana herself.

 

“Mr. Shue said it was about the journey,” Brittany says, and she looks confused and determined at the same time, which is something that Santana has never seen anyone else pull off. “And Quinn's having a baby,” Brittany continues with an air of finality, as though that changes everything.

 

It does. Santana tips her head back against the wall.

 

“Finn,” she says through gritted teeth, “sit down before I reach through your layers of blubber and rip you a new breathing hole.”

 

“Santana,” Rachel says quickly, eager to step into that spot of protector, of girlfriend, and Santana grimaces at her, which seems to stop whatever it was she was going to say. Santana huffs, satisfied. No one else moves; Tina glances at Santana, but she seems too tired to respond. Kurt sighs deeply.

 

Finn sits down, an indignant kicked puppy, and it's almost satisfying.

 

Santana can feel Kurt's eyes on her; she faces him, with her eyebrows raised.

 

“We're all worried about her, Santana,” he says. “Don't make it worse.”

 

“Ugh,” she says, and presses the point of her pen through Mia Michaels' right eye.

 

*

 

“Sorry,” Santana says later, standing on the threshold of her house still in her gold dress, and while she does mean it she doesn't deserve the softness of Brittany's eyes, because what does it mean that she can't say it in a roomful of people who are such losers but also kind of their friends, or something – what does it mean that she can't do it if it isn't like this, just them? Like undoing things in secret ever really undoes them.

 

Brittany forgives fully, and wordlessly. It's visible in her face. It's one of the wonders about her.

 

On her shoulder, she's balancing a long branch that she picked up on the driveway. “What's that for?” Santana asks her, eyeing it and the green stain it's leaving on the skin of Brittany's shoulder.

 

“For the stork,” she says, looking up from the porch into the sky, where the clouds are just a little darker than the rest. She is lovely, and there are a lot of things Santana would like to do, but inside her a warning bell goes off. She forces the feeling of _be careful_ down as best as she can, and reminds herself of the choices she's making and why.

 

“The stork?” she asks, half-smiling, because despite the rush of unease inside her Brittany is there, looking up, blinking into the weak lighting on the porch.

 

“To sit on, if it wants. It must be tired after delivering Quinn's baby,” Brittany says seriously. “Babies are fat.”

 

It's not worrying because it's Brittany, and Santana knows that Brittany makes choices in how she sees the world. She hooks her pinky around Brittany's and watches the sky with her. “Maybe it'll find a nice tree to sleep in.”

 

“I'll leave my window open tonight,” Brittany says, thoughtfully. “Just in case it rains.”

 

Santana looks at her, and is struck by something that is heavy and light at once and that screams of danger. She's done this so many times, with so many people, but it has never felt as urgent as now, with Brittany glowing gold in her dress and the evening dark, or as frightening.

 

“I didn't know you wanted to win so badly tonight,” Brittany says, still looking at the sky, and Santana swallows when Brittany's pinky finger tightens around hers.

 

She wants to scoff, deny it, shake the defeat off the way she shakes everything off when it no longer fits what she wants to project. “You know I love winning,” she responds instead.

 

“You love singing,” Brittany just says, simply, Brittany, so attuned to some things and so oblivious to others.

 

Santana edges forward and breathes for a moment on the jut of Brittany's jaw before Brittany catches on and looks down from the sky and into Santana's face, which has them almost awkwardly not kissing, and instead breathing the same air. Santana can taste the inside of Brittany's mouth even without closing the final space between them.

 

“Do you want to me to stay?” Brittany breathes, half-confused, her head cocked.

 

A strong reflex shoots through Santana's belly, and before she even has time to think about it, she says: “No,” and after a second Brittany folds back a little, away, out of the almost-contact.

 

“Okay,” she says, “you never kiss me if you don't want... So. Okay.”

 

Incongruously, Santana almost feels as though she needs to apologize again.

 

“It's okay,” Brittany says, and really, when Brittany does understand things they're always things Santana doesn't.

 

“Yeah, whatever,” she says, but it's soft enough that she doesn't feel guilty.

 

“Do you think we should visit Quinn when she's out of the hospital?” Brittany asks, reasserting normality.

 

“Yeah,” Santana says. “Maybe we should.”

 

*

 

“Your mother looks like someone broke into her botox stash,” Santana says as a greeting, stepping into Quinn's room.

 

Quinn smiles a little at the quip. She looks younger than Santana was expecting, somehow, which is stupid.

 

“She's still adjusting to having me back here,” she says, and she sounds tense, even if she looks soft in her checkered pajama pants. She grimaces. “I'm still adjusting to having me back here, too.”

 

The room is the same as it was: soft in blue and white, with posters of Orlando Bloom and pictures of the Cheerio National victories, and an innocent-looking rosary hanging from the lamp. They've spent many a sleepover here before, but now Quinn looks around with what seems like disapproval.

 

“I'm not staying here if I can help it,” she says tightly.

 

*

 

Quinn's bed is big enough for all of them. Santana sits with her knees drawn up and her back pressed to the cool wall at the head of the bed, with Quinn lying on her back next to her, and Brittany spread out at their feet, her long legs hanging off the bed.

 

“You should get a cat, Quinn,” Brittany tells the ceiling, and lifts her arms above her head, the fingers outstretched, as though there's something there that she's trying to catch. “They're just like babies.”

 

Santana smiles at her, even though Brittany isn't facing her and won't be able to see.

 

“You need to watch a cat's weight all the time too,” Brittany continues seriously, and closes a fist around the air. “It's really just like having a baby.”

 

Quinn sits up, a little laboriously, as though she still feels the phantom weight of her pregnant belly. Santana watches her struggle, and thinks about stomach muscles and the uncomfortable distaste that Quinn's pregnancy inspired in her when it first became visible, and how strange it is to see Quinn just as Quinn again. Like, maybe, Quinn had become _Quinn Plus_ , a collection of multiplying cells and bad plus-size decisions. It's just her again, and there is something sad about it, in that moment, as Santana watches Quinn rest her weight back on her elbows. Quinn's hair is wispy and unwashed, and she looks like a good gust of wind could pick her up and blow her away. “A cat,” she muses softly. “Good idea, Brit.” Santana raises an eyebrow at her, but Quinn, feeling the look, glances back without a trace of mockery.

 

“Lord Tubbington could use an exercise buddy,” Brittany muses, sounding satisfied.

 

Quinn laughs, and it's complicated but real.

 

“I'm just going to try to forget about it,” she says then. “I have the summer to go back to who I was before.” Quinn Fabray is nothing if not determined, even in her pajamas and her blond hair tufty and greasy, and Santana shares a smile with her: an unholy smile, a smile of knives, of _whatever it takes_. They know those pressures, both of them, and even if their loyalties change with the wind they never fully let go of each other.

 

“I tried to go back to being a fetus once,” Brittany says vaguely. “It was really hard.”

 

Quinn pushes out her legs until her toes touch Brittany's side and wiggles them so Brittany jerks away from the sudden tickling, and they laugh, the three of them; and Quinn's arm is warm when she slings it around Santana's knees, drawing her closer in an unbalanced hug.

 

“You're a MILF now, own that shit, okay?” Santana tells her, and Quinn takes it in stride, and draws her fingers through her hair, making it stick up a little.

 

“I'm still hot,” Quinn says, and takes a breath.

 

“You'll be a hot mama once you take a shower, yeah,” Santana says, and feels good, like she's done something that's good.

 

*

 

On the ride home from Quinn's, Brittany rests her hand on Santana's thigh and it's a good thing there isn't a lot of traffic, because it's hard to focus on the road.

 

“Do you think the stork is gone by now?” Brittany asks.

 

Santana laughs a little, which is fine, because she knows how to laugh about what Brittany says without making her sad. “I'm sure it has lots of babies to deliver all over the world, don't you, Brit?”

 

“Yeah,” Brittany says, and she smiles in such a way that it not only makes Santana feel very warm, it also makes her think that Brittany has a better idea about the world than most people. She holds the wheel with one hand and puts the other over Brittany's, threading their fingers together, and pushing down on the sudden thought of _stop that_ , instead focusing on the hot expansion of affection in her chest.

 

Brittany squeezes her hand, and things aren't as complicated as Santana sometimes thinks – and will think, again, tomorrow, because she's starting to see the patterns, even if it doesn't help.

 

Tonight, it's possible to say: “Feel like staying?”

 

“Yeah,” Brittany says easily, and Santana wishes she had some of that ease, but right now it doesn't really matter. There is no traffic. The road is straight. She can share a look with Brittany that is far longer than safe.

 

“Okay,” she says. “Let's do it.”

 

 


End file.
